Mallory Greene is the visionary founder reshaping the deathtech landscape with Eirene Cremations. Eirene disrupts traditional funeral practices, providing a digital-first approach to end-of-life services through the lens of empathy. Greene’s mission is to offer transparency, accessibility, and eco-conscious alternatives, challenging the norms of the funeral industry and dispeling the notion that families must follow expected rituals and norms during the mourning process. Eirene Cremations emerges as a trailblazer, carving a path where innovation meets compassion. With plans to further cultivate their Canadian business and expand into the US market, 2024 is poised to be a big year for the Toronto-based startup.
What is your elevator pitch to the world?
Mallory Greene: Eirene is a modern funeral home. We believe that end-of-life arrangements should be comforting, transparent, and dignified.
What excites you most about the work that you are doing?
Mallory Greene: The potential to transform the dialogue around death, dying, and grief. Our work has the opportunity to bring more openness, compassion, and humanity to a topic often avoided. If we can help remove the stigma and taboo from end-of-life conversations, we can empower people to express wishes, find closure, and memorialize in meaningful ways.
Where do you think you have made the most impact in your industry and/or community?
Mallory Greene: It’s as simple as the impact that we’ve made on the families we’ve served, helping them through the most difficult time in their life.
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Which kind of problems are you trying to solve?
Mallory Greene: Too often, families struggle with the chaos, opacity, and expense of conventional funeral arrangements. We envision a better way—one centered on the belief that the end of life deserves as much beauty, grace, and meaning as the moments that came before.
What is one lesson that you hope people will learn or walk away with from your work?
Mallory Greene: Grief is a natural and normal human response to loss. Working in death care has shown us grief’s depth, complexity and universality. We hope to convey that honouring grief itself is honouring life and what it means to be human.
What is a misconception about your work, industry, or community that you hope to dispel?
Mallory Greene: We aim to dispel the notion that families must follow expected rituals or existing norms when mourning a loved one. There is no single right way to grieve or honour a life. While full funeral services work for some, others may find more meaning in different forms of remembrance. Our goal is to empower families to craft the experience that feels right for them.
What is one way that your industry or line of work has improved as a result of the work that you do?
Mallory Greene: Eirene has applied the Rich Barton method to the death care space, focused on making insider knowledge common knowledge in a historically opaque sector. Our entire approach centers on transparency, clarity and empowering families with information and options. Just by being present as a contemporary, consumer-focused alternative, we raise the standard across the industry.
Why is 2024 going to be your best year yet?
Mallory Greene: The year ahead will be our biggest as we expand our reach across Canada, and launch in our first US markets. With ambitious expansion and marketing plans, 2024 will be the year Eirene cements itself as a leader in progressive funeral care.
What does GLORY mean to you?
Mallory Greene: Glory is about making a lasting contribution—doing work that transcends the everyday and touches lives deeply. To me, the most glorious individuals are those quietly making a difference in their communities, workplaces, and homes—not for recognition but because it’s right. A glorious life is one lived for more than just oneself.
